ace and snuggle up, and squeeze
hands, and look fondly, and swallow your emotion, and try to wait
patiently until it is dark enough so the spectators won't notice
anything, and in sea sickness you get pale in the face, and spread
apart, and let go of hands, and after you have stood it as long as
you can you rush to the rail and act as though you were going to jump
overboard, and then stop sudden and let-'er-go-gallagher, right before
folks, and after it is over you try to look as though you had enjoyed
it. I will say this much for dad, he and the widow never played a duet
over the rail, but they took turns, and dad held her as tenderly as
though they were engaged, and when he got her back to the steamer chair
he stroked her face and put camphor to her nose, and acted like an
undertaker that wasn't going to let the remains get away from him. They
were having a nice convalescent time, just afore it broke up, and hadn't
either of them been sick for ten minutes, and dad had put his arm around
her shoulders, and was talking cunning to her, and she was looking
lovingly into dad's eyes, and they were talking of meeting again in
France in a few weeks, where she was going to rent a villa, and dad was
saying he would be there with both feet, when I opened the window and
said, "The steward is bringing around a lunch, and I have ordered two
boiled pork sandwiches for you two easy marks." Well, you'd a dide to
see 'em jump. What there is about the idea of fat pork that makes people
who are sea sick have a relapse, I don't know, but the woman grabbed her
stum-mix in both hands and left dad and rushed into the cabin yelling
"enough," or something like that, and dad laid right back in the chair
and blatted like a calf, and said he would kill me dead when we got
ashore. Just then an Englishman came along and told dad he better get
up out of his chair, and dad said whose chair you talking about, and the
man said the chair was his, and if dad didn't get out of it, he would
kick him in the pants, and dad said he hadn't had a good chance at an
Englishman since the Revolutionary war, and he just wanted a chance
to clean up enough Englishmen for a mess, and dad got up and stood at
"attention," and the Englishman squared off like a prize fighter, and
they were just going to fight the battle of Bunker Hill over again, when
I run up to an officer with gold lace on his coat and lemon pie on his
whiskers, and told him an old crazy Yankee out on deck